In U.S. Pat. No. 5,221,983 to Wagner, there is illustrated and described a double star fiber optic subscriber loop architecture employing two banks of N lasers each for providing each subscriber with two channels including a modulated channel with downstream information and an initially unmodulated channel for subsequent modulation with upstream information. One bank of N lasers produces light beams having wavelengths centered around 1.3 μm for use as the modulated channels. The other bank of N lasers produces light beams having wavelengths centered around 1.5 μm for use as the initially unmodulated channels.